


What Happens Next

by travels_in_time



Category: NCIS
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travels_in_time/pseuds/travels_in_time
Summary: Just a snapshot of NCIS, a few years down the line.





	What Happens Next

**Author's Note:**

> There's a very approximate timeline here, but mostly you should apply Bellisario's Maxim. I'm not in this fandom for math. :D

“Probie!” Bishop’s voice rings through the bullpen with just a little too much glee. ”You call this a report?”

Probationary Agent Theriot sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Yes, ma’am?” he returns plaintively. 

Bishop frowns at him for the “ma’am”, but they’ve been trying to break him of that for weeks and have had no luck. McGee thinks it’s genetic; Theriot is from Mississippi. “Ha. I wouldn’t turn this in to my second-grade teacher!”

“No, ma’am.” Theriot’s expression is suitably hangdog, but he's glancing up slyly. “She wouldn’t have the security clearance, for one thing.”

Bishop laughs out loud and goes to perch on the corner of Theriot’s desk, leaning over to point at his computer as she starts working over his report practically from scratch with him. 

She’s ragging on Theriot a lot harder than she has with any of their other probationary agents, but then again, this is their first probie since she made Senior Field Agent, and McGee thinks she’s taking his progress personally. Bishop may be a little rough on Theriot, but she’s also taking on a bigger role in training him and she hasn’t superglued him to anything, so McGee's not going to interfere just yet.

After a while he looks at his watch, gathers a few folders together, and stands up. Bishop looks across at him automatically, her eyebrows rising. “Going to see the Director,” he says, nodding toward the stairs. “If I’m not back by 5:00 and we don't get a call, you guys can head out.”

“We’ll finish this report first,” she says firmly. “Right, Probie?”

Theriot grins at McGee. “We’ll get ‘er done, Boss,” he promises. 

McGee nods at both of them and heads for the stairs.

*************

He’s still not sure about the title. He’d never wanted to be “Boss”. Gibbs—and very occasionally Tony—was “Boss”. But when Gibbs had retired so precipitously and McGee had been tapped to step in as lead sooner than he’d ever expected, Bishop had transferred the monicker to him and the newer members of their team had picked it up unquestioningly. 

Nobody had seen Gibbs’ retirement coming. There was technically a mandatory retirement age for NCIS field agents, but it was just sort of taken for granted around NCIS that Gibbs would ignore it and Vance wouldn’t enforce it on him. That he’d die in the saddle one day. But Vance had taken early retirement to move closer to his kids, who’d both chosen colleges in California. And the day after Vance made the announcement about the transition, Gibbs rocked the agency with the news that he was leaving as well.

The new Director came to them from Homeland Security, where his last job had been heading up some kind of joint task force that specialized in analyzing foreign intelligence. Bishop knew more about it than McGee, via her contacts at the NSA, and she’d been pretty impressed at the work he’d been doing. McGee had been less worried about his background and more distracted by the casual sort of perma-stubble that he was sporting, which annoyed McGee for no good reason. 

Gibbs’ last day had coincided with the new Director’s first day, although nobody on Gibbs’ team believed in coincidences. Vance had been the one to point that out.

“Wish we could talk you into staying a while longer, Gibbs. You know, some people are going to take your leaving as a sign that you don’t have any confidence in the new leadership.” 

Gibbs had snorted. “Not responsible for what idiots think, Leon.” He’d already said his farewells to his team; now he took one long last look at his desk before he turned back to the Directors, old and new, and nodded shortly. “Just got better things to do now.” 

He’d packed up his desk the day before. He only took one thing with him when he left, walking straight and tall to the elevator, and everyone in the bullpen stopped what they were doing to watch him go. 

*******

McGee smiles at the Director’s PA. “Good afternoon, Shelly.”

“Hi, Agent McGee. You can go on in, he's expecting you.”

He knocks anyway, just to be polite, before he opens the door. The Director glances up from a pile of paperwork. “McGee, have a seat. Be right with you.” He waves the pen he’s wielding in explanation. “Need to finish signing these or Shelly’ll have my head.”

McGee makes himself comfortable while the Director pores through the rest of the papers. A few he sets aside; the rest he scans over, signs quickly, and stacks neatly. He rises when he’s done, stepping out for a moment to take the finished paperwork to Shelly. “Need to look into a couple of those,” McGee hears him telling her. She murmurs something in response that he can’t quite hear, and then the Director is stepping back into the room, closing the door quietly, coming back to sit down and giving McGee his full attention. 

McGee hands over his own stack of folders, watching as the Director shuffles through them quickly. He looks back up at McGee. “Anything I need to know about right away?”

He’ll take them home and go through them over the weekend, McGee has learned by now, along with similar stacks from the other teams. He doesn’t put in excessive time at the office unless there’s a crisis, but that doesn’t mean he’s not keeping up with what goes on under his jurisdiction.

McGee shakes his head. “Pretty run-of-the-mill. No political implications, no inter-agency tangles.” 

“Nobody I have to make nice with? Thank God.” The Director sighs, sets the folders aside, and takes off his reading glasses, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. McGee sympathizes, but silently; he’s noticed that he’s holding his own reports further and further away to proofread them nowadays. 

“How’s your new probationary agent settling in?” 

McGee grins at the memory of Bishop perched on the corner of Theriot’s desk. “Pretty well. Bishop’s really getting her teeth into the Senior Field Agent position, too. She’s staying on his case.”

The Director leans back, studying him. “In the good way, I hope.”

“Oh, yeah. He knows she’s got his back.” McGee rubs the back of his neck absent-mindedly, thinking about the shouting match he’d had with Bishop earlier in the week, when he’d caught her taking the blame for a mistake Theriot had made. He’s not going to tell the Director about that; he’s got his team’s back too, after all. He’d been simultaneously proud of her and furious at her, and he’d had a sudden rush of sympathy for Gibbs that he’d never expected to feel. 

He makes himself focus back in on what the Director needs to hear. “He takes guidance well, picks stuff up fast. He’s got a real knack for talking to victims and witnesses, too. Maybe it’s those Southern manners. People just start spilling their guts to him.” 

They talk a little bit more about the probie, about Dennison, McGee’s junior agent who’s out on vacation, about the various weaknesses and strengths of the agents and what McGee’s plans for them are. Gibbs had run his team differently; he’d used their strengths and completely ignored their weaknesses, and they’d made it work somehow and had mostly become stronger for it, but McGee wants to take a different approach, and he’s glad the Director is on board with him. 

They wrap it up after a while, when McGee sees the Director glancing surreptitiously at his watch. He stands. “I’ll email the info on those seminars to you.”

The Director nods at him, standing as well. “Can’t promise anything until I look at the budget, but we’ll do what we can. You have a good evening, Agent McGee.”

“Thank you, sir. You too.” He heads for the door, and a wad of balled-up paper bounces off the back of his head. He sighs. “Director…”

The Director makes a sharp negative noise, and McGee resignedly checks his own watch. 5:01 PM. He sighs again, louder this time. “Tony…”

He turns, rolling his eyes. Tony is grinning at him. “Time to go home, Probie.”

“Not a Probie anymore,” McGee argues. 

“You’ll always be _my_ Probie, McLead Agent,” Tony sing-songs at him, and McGee rolls his eyes again, because it’s true but he’ll never admit it. 

He changes the subject. “Saw you checking the time. You got plans?”

Tony nods; the tired eyes light up a bit. “Tali’s got a soccer game. The nanny’s bringing her. I’m meeting them at the field.” 

“The what now’s bringing her?” McGee gapes. “Does…does he know you call him that?”

“He _started_ it.” Tony shudders. “I think he does it just because it weirds me out.” He looks over his desk, stacking papers, folders, notepads, a tablet that he slides into its protective sleeve. “You guys coming over tomorrow?” He’s loading everything into his bag as he speaks, so casually that McGee knows instinctively that this is why Tony called him back; that this is important.

He’d been slowly backing toward the door, but he stops now, focusing. “Yeah, why?”

Tony shrugs. He’s putting on his coat now. “Just trying to plan.”

“I think all of us are going to be there. I mean, it’s your birthday. The big one.” Tony gives him a dirty look for that, but McGee continues undeterred. “Even Abby’s flying in.” Tony looks simultaneously happy and terrified at that news, and McGee was never given to the flashes of intuition that both Gibbs and Tony lived on, but he’s having one right now. “Are you planning to tell everyone?”

“Tell everyone what?” 

Tony’s determined nonchalance almost makes McGee reconsider, until he notices—he is a trained investigator, after all—the death grip that Tony has on his bag. “About the two of you.”

“The two of who what?”

Now that McGee mostly deals with the straightforwardly reasonable Director DiNozzo, it’s easy to forget that Tony is, as Abby said once, a past master at crawfishing. He can backpedal like nobody’s business when he's not ready to deal with something. But McGee’s been wondering about this since Tony came back from overseas, and now that he’s got his teeth into it, he’s not letting go. 

“You moved in with Gibbs.”

“Yeah?” Tony shrugs. “We needed a place to stay.”

“For two years?” 

“It worked. Easier for Gibbs to take care of Tali that way.” 

“Yeah.” McGee snorts suddenly. “That is such a Tony DiNozzo move. You are totally sleeping with the hot nanny.”

Tony sputters, which McGee considers enough of a reward for forcing himself to refer to Gibbs that way. “I—he is _not_ —you—“ McGee just stands there and waits, and finally Tony pulls himself together. “It’s a big house for just one guy, McDirtyMind. He’s not getting any younger, you know, and—” 

“Oh, just _wait_ until I tell Gibbs that you called him old.”

Tony grins at him gleefully. “Sure. You can do that right before I tell him you called him hot.”

McGee pauses to consider that, and they both wince. 

“Come on, McGee.” Tony sounds eminently reasonable, and McGee’s trust in his Director wars with his leeriness of Reasonable Tony, brought on by years of hard-won experience. “I wouldn’t sleep with the nanny. That’d be pretty tacky.” 

“That's true. Bad example for the K-I-D.” 

The new voice swings them both around, jumping guiltily as if the last five years had never happened and they’ve been caught goofing off on the job. 

A small whirlwind in a green-and-white uniform darts around the silver-haired figure in the door, catching Tony around the waist and hugging him hard. “I can spell, you know,” she calls back accusingly, her voice slightly muffled. 

“Sometimes I F-O-R-G-E-T,” Gibbs says. The corner of his mouth twitches up as he meets Tony’s eyes over her head.

Tali lets Tony go and spins around. “Hi, Uncle Probie!” She hops over to give McGee a high-five. “Are you and Aunt Lilah bringing the babies to the party tomorrow?”

The “babies” are three-and-a-half years old, but Tali takes a near-maternal interest in them. McGee nods. “We’re all coming,” he tells her seriously. 

“Good! There's a lot of cake.” That settled, Tali turns back to her father, tugging on his hand. “Come on, Daddy, I can’t be late for the game!”

“I thought I was meeting you there.” But Tony’s hoisting his bag obediently already.

Gibbs shrugs. “She wanted us to all go together. We’ll pick your car up later.” 

“Okay, Boss.” The agreeable capitulation is classic Tony. The fond, warm smile he directs at the figure in the doorway is new.

McGee gets an odd feeling in what Gibbs would call his gut. He’d had the same feeling in the bullpen on Tony’s first day as Director. He’d known Tony’s record at NCIS; knew what he’d done since then. It was still an adjustment. His former SFA, his mentor and tormentor in equal parts, his partner, his annoying big brother figure, his friend…in charge of the entire agency. He’d just about managed to get it straightened out in his head when Gibbs took Tali’s hand and strode to the elevator with her, all eyes on the two of them. And he’d known, then, that something fundamental had shifted in the world; that nothing would ever be the same.

It’s the same thing now, as Gibbs steps aside and Tali drags Tony through the doorway. Gibbs waves McGee through as well and locks the office carefully behind them. Then he stops, fixing McGee with that heavy stare that hasn’t lost any of its force in the years that he’s spent looking after a small child. McGee waits, feeling the universe getting ready to change, to lock itself into a new configuration.

“He wouldn’t sleep with the nanny,” Gibbs says abruptly, and one eyebrow rises in what almost looks like a challenge as he holds McGee’s eyes. “But he does sleep with his husband.”

For the second time that evening, McGee is gaping. He shuts his mouth with an effort. “You—you guys are…”

“Telling everyone tomorrow. Time you all knew.” 

McGee can’t help the ridiculous grin that’s taking over his face. “Boss, that’s…that’s _great_. Congratulations.” 

That hard stare softens just slightly, and McGee realizes that Gibbs had actually been uncertain about his reaction. Gibbs nods at him just as Tony calls back, “Excuse me, we are the Director of a federal agency and an internationally-known superstar soccer player, where is our chauffeur?” 

Gibbs rolls his eyes and huffs a little, and it’s such a familiar gesture that McGee relaxes. Circumstances may change and feelings may finally be expressed in ways that were impossible in years previously, but the important things—love, family—those are bedrock. 

He grins, picturing Abby’s reaction. “See you guys tomorrow,” he tells Gibbs. “Tell Tali good luck on her game!” 

Downstairs, he sees that his team, following orders, have packed up and gone. Theriot’s report, apparently now up to Bishop’s standards, is in his inbox. He gets his own things together and heads out to pick the twins up from daycare. Friday night means pizza, ice cream, and general chaos, and McGee wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a small scene in ytteb's story [Anthony DiNozzo--Moving Back Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7521007/chapters/17094874). You'll probably know which scene when you read it. :)


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